Category Archives: Inspiring

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I’m truly sick of all the divisive, argumentative posts that I see day after day about race.

I don’t disagree with what the facts suggest. Prejudice exists on every side. It pains me to see that. Nearly every post related to the recent “race wars” I’ve seen from my friends and associates have contained prejudice.

We (the human race; not racially divided communities) need to be brave enough to step out from behind the cowardice curtains of prejudice and entitlement and learn how to respect one another because we are fellow humans.

We are ALL put in this earth with the same ultimate purpose: to become like our Father in Heaven. The only prejudice that exists after this life is against sin.

That’s what I stand for. That’s what I believe in. That’s what I do my best to act upon.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s not that living without passion is desirable or encouraged, but you cannot live a meaningful life without purpose. Dr. Andrew Thorn writes about this in Chapter 7 of his latest book, Leading With Your Legacy in Mind. If you were to follow only your passions, you would be an erratic and irrational mess. Purpose focuses your work and builds passion.

It’s been at least a year and a half since I last revisited my personal mission statement. That is far too long a time between visits. I’ve learned more about the importance of reviewing and revising my personal mission statement and have I’ve recently had reason to reflect on it in greater detail.

Having a mission statement gives you a focus and sets the tone for your personal goals. It can be a wonderfully enlightening experience to do this exploration of your purpose. You will undoubtedly learn more about yourself during this time of reflection.

My good friend, and coworker, hit things off very early on in our relationship. We met when I was hired by the company for whom he had already been working. The short end of the story is that as we grew together in the professional arena, we also grew as friends.

Several months ago we discussed that we wanted to eventually work together at our own company. We have seen countless examples of mediocrity in the workplace, both at the employee and ownership levels. Our aspiration is to strive to be excellent in our professional and personal lives. But we don’t want to stop there. We want to encourage and help others strive for excellence.

We wondered how we might be able to start collecting examples of excellence now while we are still young in our endeavor. Our agreement was to find a place where we could collaboratively document and share these examples.

We found such an opportunity through an emerging social media platform. Flipboard would allow us to curate a magazine where we could collaboratively collect and share inspiring articles relative to our joint venture.

We’ve just gotten a start at this, but here is a link to what we have so far: Excellence Is Not Optional. Go ahead and check it out! Your feedback is more than welcome.

What are you doing to be excellent? Share with me and I might just add your experience to our magazine!

A couple years ago I was at a desperately low period of life. I wanted to get out of my rut and start being better. I wanted to feel successful. As I often do, I turned to some of my regular social media outlets for uplifting and inspiring thoughts. That’s when I came across this TED talk by Shawn Achor:

While on my lunch break today I came across this video from SoulPancake that brought me back to that time when I overcame so much by doing what seemed to be so little:

So just in case any of you have a “case of the Mondays”, I thought this would be an appropriate topic to help you reconcile what’s left of your day with some positive thoughts! So what are you waiting for? Be happy and be successful!